Date: Opening Friday 2nd February 2018
Time: 18:00 – 21:00 , Public Presentation at 18:30
Location: Tent, Witte de Withstraat 50, Rotterdam
Free entry during Opening

Exhibition runs: 02.02.2018 – 22.04.2018
Cost: €5.00full/€2.50concession Gallery entry

Experimental Publishing would like to invite you to the opening “The Temporary Autonomous Bureau”, a project by some of their 1st and 2nd year students and part of “Rotterdam Cultural Histories” series co-organized by TENT Gallery and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.

Rotterdam Cultural Histories #13, The Temporary Autonomous Bureau is a space for researching, discussing and mapping interpretations of autonomy in cultural or social projects within the city of Rotterdam. We are inhabitants of the the Poortgebouw, a historical living community on the Maas River, and students from the Experimental Publishing Master at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Situated in TENT, we turned a space into a temporary office. We will use the space to carry on with the research on the history of the Poortgebouw, following two projects from 2017, “The Autonomous Archive” and “A Bed, A Chair and A Table”.

The Poortgebouw is a 37 year old organisation that hosts cultural activities, as well as a living community of 30 people. During these years it has offered space for self-organised events and projects, acted as a residence for guests, artists and musicians, and provided a living and working space for different generations of people from all over the world.
The building was first squatted in 1980 and got legalized. The legalization was made possible through the renovation of the building, which turned it into a livable space.
The dedication of the first group of inhabitants also led to the establishing of the Vereniging Poortgebouw.

In the timeframe of three months we will use this space to organize a series of temporary events that will map the existing independent strategies of self-organization in the city. At the same time, the public will have the access to parts of the fragmented Poortgebouw archive. The “Temporary Autonomous Bureau” serves as meeting point for semi-institutional and semi-public experiences, discourse and interventions.

How can independent organizations maintain agency in a city where institutionalization of cultural and living spaces is the rule?

Is it possible to organize a sustainable, non-hierarchical and organized socio-cultural project, through collaborative bottom-up practices?

Can a certain degree of openness and autonomy be maintained in the management of a self-organized social and cultural project?

For more information see here
We are looking forward to see you at the opening of our bureau!
We will keep you updated with our upcoming talks and workshop.

“The Temporary Autonomous Bureau” are
Giulia de Giovanelli, Naomi de Wit, Philippa Driest, Angeliki Diakrousi, Alice Strete and Thanos Kaltsamis